Retail shipping businesses as well as the postal service have relied upon human workers to assist customers with their shipping needs. Workers at retail shipping stores must ask each customer which shipping company the customer wishes to select for sending a package. Workers have used scales and measurement tapes or rulers to ascertain the dimensions of packages. In some cases, customers may also be provided access to these tools to determine the dimensions (e.g., height, width, length or depth, and weight or mass) of the packages that they wish to ship. Electronic versions of these tools may also be used such as, for example, laser measures and digital scales. However, none of these devices has permitted automated, self-service measurement of packages by customers with the measurement data transmitted to a payment system that calculates the shipping charge and accepts payment from the customer.
Current shipping systems and methods also do not permit customers who wish to ship a package to easily provide a recipient's name, address, and other contact information to the retail shipping store. These current shipping systems and methods also do not permit an automated identification of a package type (e.g., a letter envelope or a box) or an automated identification of a shipper (also referred to herein as a carrier or a courier) that has been selected by a customer to deliver the package to the recipient.
A need exists for systems and methods that allows self-service processing of a package for shipping by a customer including obtaining the package's measurements. A need also exists for systems and methods that allow a customer (i.e., a sender of the package) to easily provide a recipient's name, address, and contact information for printing on a shipping label. A need further exists for systems and methods that are capable of automatically determining the type of package being shipped. Still a further need exists for systems and methods capable of automatically determining an identity of the shipper selected by the customer (or by the customer's agent or employee or by the retail shipping store's employee) to deliver the package to the recipient and for determining a shipping price and processing payment based on the determination of the selected shipper's identity.